Forecast Analysis on Interacting Dark Energy Models from Future Generation PICO and DESI Missions

TL;DR

This paper forecasts how future CMB and BAO experiments like PICO and DESI can improve constraints on interacting dark energy models, especially on the dark energy equation of state, but small coupling constants remain challenging to constrain.

Contribution

It provides a forecast analysis of future high-precision CMB and BAO data to constrain interacting dark energy models, considering stability and different interaction scenarios.

Findings

PICO alone yields better constraints than Planck on ΛCDM parameters.

Combining PICO and DESI significantly improves parameter constraints.

Small positive coupling constants remain difficult to constrain even with future data.

Abstract

The next-generation CMB satellite missions are expected to provide robust constraints on a wide range of cosmological parameters with unprecedented precision. But these constraints on the parameters could weaken if we do not attribute dark energy to a cosmological constant. The cosmological models involving interaction between dark energy and dark matter can give rise to comparable energy densities at the present epoch, thereby alleviating the so-called cosmic coincidence problem. In the present paper, we perform a forecast analysis to test the ability of the future generation high-sensitive Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) experiments to constrain phenomenological interacting dark energy models. We consider cosmic variance limited future CMB polarization experiment PICO along with BAO information from the DESI experiment to constrain the parameters of the interacting dark sector. Based on the stability of the cosmological perturbations, we consider two possibilities for the interaction scenario. We investigate the impact of both the coupling constant and the equation of state parameter of dark energy on the CMB temperature power spectrum, matter power spectrum, and $f\sigma_8$. We have used simulated temperature and polarization data from PICO within the multipole ranges ($\ell = 2 - 4000$), and as expected, we do see PICO alone produces better constraints than Planck on the $\Lambda$CDM parameters. With the integration of the PICO and DESI missions, we observe a significant improvement in the constraints on several cosmological parameters, especially the equation of state parameter of dark energy. However, we note that additional data is required to constrain a small positive coupling constant.